Updated over 15 years ago on . Most recent reply
Bookkeeping - what's your approach?
As we acquire more and more (mostly buy and holds, but also some rehabs for a quick flip) it's becoming more and more of a hassle to keep the books.
I am yet to find an adequate piece of bookkeeping software which really lends itself to real estate investing. Quickbooks claims to be REI friendly, but it simply isn't. It's written on the premise of being service oriented with buying goods, selling the goods and or a service, then invoicing. I'm having a heck of a time forcing my transactions to fit that model.
At this point, I think I'd be better off with maintaining my old school way of just doing it all manually...but that's at the risk of missing something as our volume increases. Quite honestly, I'm very detailed with my manual bookkeeping and simply maintaining an accurate history is partially holding me back from doing more REI.
What methods do you employ?
Most Popular Reply
The advantage an accounting system has over spreadsheets is up to date reporting.
How long would it take you to pull your spreadsheets together to give a complete balance sheet of your operation? It takes me about 10 seconds in QuickBooks.
If you do your own taxes, which I do then have them reviewed by my accountant, TurboTax will import the data from QuickBooks and if you have it set up correctly for your entity, it will put it on the right tax lines GUARANTEED. Can't get that from a spreadsheet.
BTW, I am not discouraging your use of spreadsheets to run your company. If it works for you, great. I'm just pointing out the benefits of a real accounting system go way beyond just tracking income and expenses.